The speed with which Mahendra Singh Tikait had to tender an apology for his “casteist” remarks against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati underlines a welcome intolerance in our public life. There is the fear of the law, with the Mayawati Government having already made evident its intention to take strict recourse to the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Therefore, presumably, reports of the Jat leader’s supporters having struck some sort of a truce with the administration to allow him to “surrender” at a court in Bijnor this week. But more than that, the incident is a reminder of civil society’s intolerance of the language of caste’s oppressive hierarchy as a tool for political mobilisation. Many political leaders have sprung to Tikait’s defence by now — but not one of them has made even the slightest show of condoning the use of the term he now regrets.
However, the kind of politics that is now unfolding over the Tikait incident is deeply worrying. His influence in western UP is fading. But clearly, Mayawati’s political opponents see in him an opportunity to break her “rainbow” coalition of lower, middle and upper castes. The Congress and the BJP have bemoaned the manner in which the police went for Tikait. As have the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, two parties particularly concerned at their rout by Mayawati’s BSP in their traditional (Jat) stronghold of western UP.
This raises two concerns. First, and most dangerously, by refusing to let this incident fade away, Mayawati’s opponents threaten a social peace, which is at best tenuous at any given time in this region. This could take our politics back to the unseemly and unproductive confrontations of the past. Second, as our columnist today notes, Mayawati’s challengers have to find ways to challenge her that go beyond allusions to her identity. She built her social coalition bottom up, by projecting the BSP as a winning ticket. But now that her party is in power, the onus is on her to validate that promise with an agenda for governance. By sticking to the politics of identity, they let her off the hook on this.
In fact, for Mayawati, who is targeting a greater share of the vote in other state elections later this year, such polarisation provides a platform to campaign from.
